• Question: Were where you born and what is your hometowns greatist science achivement

    Asked by to Anna, Elaine, Fiona, Kevin, Darren on 23 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Fiona McLean

      Fiona McLean answered on 23 Jun 2014:


      I’m from Edinburgh which has an incredible history (and present) of science! So I’m spoiled for choice. One of the most famous is Alexander Graham Bell who invented the telephone. So even if you haven’t heard of him you will have definitely used his invention. He is so famous he even has a pub named after him!

    • Photo: Kevin O'Dell

      Kevin O'Dell answered on 23 Jun 2014:


      Sadly Hayes in West London is not awash with awesome scientists. If we make the assumption that Robin Bush (born in Hayes in 1943) of Channel 4’s Time Team was a top scientist then it would have to be him. However, he actually studied history at Oxford, so I think he’ll have to be excluded.

      As I can’t find any famous scientist born in Hayes, perhaps you’ll let me have someone who lived in Hayes? Fritz Houtermans (born in West Prussia in 1903) lived in Hayes from 1933-35 and was a nuclear physicist (which is why he presumably ended up in Hayes to work at electronics company EMI). He escaped Nazi Germany and after the war was courted by both the Soviet Union and the USA to work in their nuclear weapons programme.

      Good question, as an hour ago I’d never heard of either of them!

    • Photo: Elaine Cloutman-Green

      Elaine Cloutman-Green answered on 23 Jun 2014:


      I was born in Birmingham; which is a great industrial city and has many engineers that have done great things.

      In terms of scientists the Chance brothers were born in Birmingham and they made the first glass syringes, allowing the development of medicine as we know it.

      I really love my home city and I’m proud to be a Brummie.

    • Photo: Zhiming Darren Tan

      Zhiming Darren Tan answered on 24 Jun 2014:


      I was born in Singapore, which is a city and also a small country. It’s a young country – 50 years old next year. But a country nonetheless, with its own National Academy of Sciences.

      I hesitate to pick out achievements simply because science is such an international activity. Scientists born in Singapore can do science in another part of the world, and scientists born elsewhere also come to Singapore to do science when it makes sense to do so.

      Perhaps it’s best to answer this question in another 50 years or so when we have the proper perspective – but maybe by then the world will be organised so differently that the question no longer makes sense…

    • Photo: Anna Bramwell-Dicks

      Anna Bramwell-Dicks answered on 24 Jun 2014:


      I am from a small town called Chesham in Buckinghamshire (though technically I was born in High Wycombe hospital!)

      We don’t really have any notable scientists from my town… but Steven Fry went to school here, and he is the host of QI which is a TV programme that contains lost of quite interesting science. Does that count?

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